The Ares Virus

by A P Bateman

  ***

  The motel was a sixty dollar a night special with ample parking in front of the chalet rooms. It was aimed at working drivers like sales reps who wanted inexpensive rates and easy access to the interstate. Nobody would have stayed two nights. It provided a breakfast of donuts and Danish pastries from the diner down the road. Along with some jugs of juice and coffee from a machine in the reception. No frills.

  Stone wasn't interested in donuts or coffee, or whether the rooms had cable. He paid up front and in full and took the key that the attendant had handed him. Inside the room he had dropped the paper bag of purchases on the nearest bed and ushered Isobel into the bathroom.

  “Pass your blouse out through the door and take a shower,” he paused. “I'll go get it washed while you get cleaned up, then I'll help sort those cuts out.”

  She didn't reply, but she did go inside the bathroom and shut the door. He heard her yelp and whimper inside and he assumed that she was taking her blouse off. Then the door opened slightly and she passed the bloodstained blouse out through the gap. He took it and was bemused by her silence but was at least thankful that she had done what he had instructed.

  He made his way outside and followed the sign for the laundry. Inside there were two washers and two dryers as well as a drying rack and a heater. Next to the furthest-most dryer there was a vending machine for soap powder and fabric softener. He reached into his pocket for some quarters but hesitated when he noticed a newly washed halter-neck top on the drying rack. It looked to be a similar size to what Isobel would wear and quite possibly similar in taste. He looked down at the crimson stained blouse and balled it up and dropped it into the waste can. Without a glance he swiped the top and slipped it under his suit jacket and made his way back to the motel room.

  Isobel was no longer in the bathroom, but was perched on the furthest bed wearing just jeans, her bra and a towel wrapped around her head. She was looking at her torso in the mirror and was attempting to get a shard of glass out of her stomach. She was wincing and sucking air through clenched teeth.

  He dropped the newly acquired top on the bed. “Here, let me help.” Stone paced towards her, but stopped as she recoiled.

  “No,” she said bluntly. “I'm fine.” She fumbled with the shard, and it hurt badly. She winced.

  “You know, I've got a small Swiss Army knife in my wallet. It’s like a credit card design,” he paused. “Not that you’re interested in that, but it's got a pretty good set of tweezers on it.” He walked closer and looked at her stomach. “It'll be a lot easier, and a sight less painful if you let me help.” He took out his wallet and retrieved the card, thumbed out the tiny pair of tweezers. He passed them to her and she took them from him, snatching it from his clasp.

  She pulled the makeshift turban from her head and dropped the towel on the bed. Her hair was wet, glossy and thick. “How about you explain what's going on,” she snapped. “That'll help me a whole lot more.”

  He watched as she plucked the slither of glass out and a trickle of blood seeped out and rolled over her olive skin. “I was hoping that you'd start off with what you know ...” He picked up a piece of gauze and dabbed the blood, cutting the flow short of her naval. “Why did you take the drives with the information on them?”

  She removed another shard of glass with a flinch and looked up at him. “Who are you? And what about your friend?”

  He thought of David Stein. Friend. He had only met the guy that morning, but he felt that he had lost exactly that. A good friend. Somebody we could have had a beer and a burger with after watching a game of football some time. He looked at her. She was vulnerable, yet resilient. “My name is Robert Stone, and I'm an agent with the Secret Service.”

  “You protect the president, right?”

  “Amongst other things, yes.” He looked down at the paper bag of purchases he had bought in the convenience store. He picked up a can of soda, pulled the tap and passed it to her. “Here, drink some,” he paused as she took it from him. “The sugar hit will help.” He tossed her the packet of painkillers and they landed on the bed beside the gauze pads.

  “Thanks.” She sipped a little of the sugary syrup drink, then placed the can on the floor. “You ever protect him, personally?” She asked, then looked down and opened the packet of painkillers and popped a couple into her mouth. She drank them down with the soda.

  “I have done hope to again, someday. We don’t just protect him though. Congressmen and woman, their families sometimes. Foreign dignitaries also.” He opened a can for himself and drank half in the first few gulps. It was cool and sweet and refreshing. “And then there’s the treasury. You commit a crime against Uncle Sam’s dollar and we’re all over your ass.”

  She picked up the ointment and slapped a little on a piece of gauze. “What do you do then?”

  “I've worked in the treasury, against fraud and forgery. And I've worked as personal bodyguard to the president, within his close protection detail. Right before this assignment, I was working as an instructor. Teaching close protection to new recruits in the Secret Service.”

  “And what is this job?” She had finished with the gauze and was tearing lengths of

  tape to size.

  Stone watched her, then tore some gauze into little squares and handed them to her. “I

  looked into the bioresearch facility after an investigation I was conducting kept turning up a few anomalies, as well as a couple of names. After my initial report I was assigned with conducting a security audit of the facility. From its employees and contracted workers through to its funding and directorship.”

  “And who tasked you with this assignment?”

  Stone hesitated. He was gaining ground with her. It was important to gain her trust. He

  took the folded envelope from his inside pocket and passed it to her. “The president himself.”

  She read the letter, studied it for a while in silence, then slipped it back into the envelope and handed it back to him. “Pretty impressive,” she paused. “But why you?”

  “He trusts me. Trusts my family.”

  “Your family?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It's a long story.”

  She smirked. “You going someplace?”

  He looked at her abdomen, which now represented a patchwork quilt. The bleeding had stopped and she seemed to be unbothered by the wounds. Maybe it was the adrenaline, or perhaps the painkillers had started to kick in. Either way, she seemed far more controlled than she had been previously. He reached out and picked up the halter-top he had taken. He tossed it to her and she caught it, inspected it somewhat dubiously. “Yes,” he said. “And so are you.”

  THIRTY TWO

  The woman was smiling.It was a smile that beamed brightly and served as a conduit from her soul to the outside world. There was warmth and love and happiness and pride. She looked down at him, towering over his tiny frame, though not imposing. Merely comforting and protective. The natural and definitive matriarch.

  The table behind her was piled high with food, the result of much time spent attentively in the kitchen. There were French fancies - the little cupcakes with fondant icing and Chantilly cream in the middle. There were also pigs in blankets, mini quiches, sandwich fingers, Scotch eggs and great bowls of chips with various dips. Most of the kids had made a mess of the dips and the once pristinely white tablecloth was now a myriad of red and green and yellow puddles but the woman didn't seem to mind. The sandwiches were cut into delicate fingers and the fillings were falling out, as the children wasted no time in demolishing the buffet platter before them but she didn't seem to mind about that either.

  She kept beaming her smile and ushered him towards the pile of colorfully wrapped presents. It was his birthday and he was the center of attention. The children were more interested in the food than in his presents and he felt sad, suddenly conscious of the sensation that his popularity had waned in favor of pigs in blankets and fancy c
akes.

  He stamped his feet in an act of frustration and shouted at his guests, but to no avail. Their attentions were towards the food and not a single child showed interest in the opening of his presents. He started to sob and a number of adults looked away in embarrassment for the boy's mother. There were parents too, they knew all too well how difficult a five-year old could be. It was the hollow feeling inside that he despised, like there were no surprises left, no enjoyment to be had for the remainder of the day. His mother put a hand around his shoulders and said something in his ear. He didn't know what, but he knew that she had been reassuring him.

  The man looked up suddenly from where he had been staring blankly at the screen of the laptop, shaken back to the present and the objective. He wasn't sure what the memory had been or where it had come from but it was unlike any other. It hadn't been an enhanced daydream, willed to fruition by his desire to recall such things and it hadn't been a dream. He had simply remained wide-awake and lost himself in his own past. However, he had no memories of his past and he had no recognition of the woman in the memory. He was sure, even hopeful that the woman had been his own mother but with nothing to compare her with and no lateral memory to recall he wasn't sure if she was in fact merely a figment of his imagination.

  He physically shook his head at the mere suggestion of the desire to will the memory into existence. That would have been a sign of weakness; to seek comfort in the blissful tranquility of his past.

  He looked back down at the laptop's screen and noticed the little red dot start to flash intermittently and move steadily along the line indicating the road they had been travelling on.

  He slipped the car’s automatic shift into drive and eased off the gravel and back onto the tarmac road. There was no traffic in front or behind, so he kept his distance from the Mustang as he would not have the luxury of cover.

  The sun was still bright in the sky, but the temperature had started to drop dramatically and the shadows from the trees were longer. The sky was a much darker blue now, with a tinge of red across to the west. He estimated that there was about an hour or so of sunlight and approximately another hour and a half of daylight left. He could afford to wait patiently for the dark. Darkness was his friend. It would keep him from view and it would provide him with a natural cloak of invisibility.

  He did his best to forget the earlier episode of weakness; tried to rid himself of the memory altogether. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't help wanting to know who the woman had been, and above all, would he ever see her again?

  THIRTY THREE

  He squeezed the maple syrup over the stack of shorts and meticulously levered each pancake off the other in an effort to douse each one in an equal layer of the sweet syrup. He placed the bottle back down on the table and picked up the shaker of powdered vanilla sugar.

  “You can't be serious?”

  Tom Hardy looked up startled by the intrusion. He dusted the stack with a blizzard of powdered sugar and smiled. “Absolutely,” he paused to pick up his fork, and then looked at him once more. “Please, take a seat.”

  McCray eased himself along the bench seat and into the booth. “That looks like someone had an accident in the snow.” He clicked his fingers at the nearby waitress and she came over and stood, somewhat impatiently with an order pad and pen. “Coffee, black. And can I get a piece of pecan pie?” She nodded curtly and wrote the order down as she walked back towards the counter. “No tip for her.” He stared at the mess on Hardy's plate and shook his head. “Are you on first name terms with your orthodontist and cardiologist?”

  “No, should I be?” Hardy’s tone was impatient.

  “Sorry, just saying...”

  “Well don't.” He shoveled another mouthful of pancakes and maple syrup away, then picked up his cup and drank some coffee as he chewed. He spoke with his mouthful. “We've got to start clearing this shit up and we've got to start now.”

  “I'm working on it.”

  “You're working on shit.”

  “I'm doing the best I can!”

  “Keep your voice down, fool.” Hardy looked around the diner and glared at him as the waitress neared. She dropped the plate down in front of McCray and filled his cup with coffee, straight to the top. Hardy waited for her to return to the counter before he continued. “If the bioresearch facility is under investigation, then they know something is wrong. That's obvious. And it's not going to take too long before they start looking in your direction. Again, I state the obvious.”

  McCray sipped some coffee. His hand was shaking. He spilt a little down his tie. “They already have,” he paused. “The guy was a fucking asshole. Barged into my office, sat in my own fucking chair.” He shook his head, said through gritted teeth. “Even got Agnes to make coffee. She was real fucking pissed with him when he left.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Some guy called Stone. Robert Stone,” McCray shook his head. “He said that he was from the Secret Service. Even had a letter granting him open access and unlimited cooperation. Signed by the fucking president, no less! What in Christ's name is the Secret Service doing investigating us?”

  “I don't know.” Hardy pushed the half-eaten portion of pancakes away from him and shook his head. “Anyway, it's not us, it's you.”

  “Fuck you! We're in this together,” McCray protested. “Anyway, you're the fucking spook, you should know. I thought you were going to take care of any shit like this.”

  “I will. We just have to know who the fuck he is and where he is. After that, I'll make him wish he hadn't been fucking born.”

  “Well, now you know his name and you know who he works for, so get on with it.” McCray sipped some coffee, and then forked a mouthful of pecan pie. He chewed with his mouth open.

  “I just can't see how they moved so fast,” Hardy mused. “And why the Secret Service? They're just bullet catchers, for Christ's sake. And other than aspire to take a hit for the president or some dumb-fuck congressman, all they take care of is Treasury security and monetary acts of crime.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like,” Hardy took an extra-large forkful of pancakes, dripping the maple syrup on the edge of the table. He wiped the spillage clean with his napkin, and then looked back at McCray. “Forgery, or bearer bonds or major coups involving money yet to be released to public circulation. They come up with all the new banknote designs, security designs, that is. But that is an entirely different section of the Secret Service. Fuck knows what this asshole Stone is doing in our camp.”

  McCray pondered over his cup and then smiled at his companion. “What if this guy Stone wasn't on to my end of the operation? What if he was investigating you all along? That would explain how he arrived on the scene so soon. Perhaps he just got to bioresearch through keeping tabs on you.”

  Hardy looked at him and shrugged. “You think it hasn't happened before? Fuck, I've been CIA since I was twenty two years old. I'm almost sixty and still in the game. I’ve outlasted every other bastard who ever came along and tried to make a name for himself. Hell, if someone in Langley is trying to smear some shit on me then they had better be ready to take a bath in a ton of it. After that, they had better be ready to eat what's left. Leave this guy Stone to me and I'll have they guy behind the scenes pulling the little fuck's strings. I'll have his balls on rye with pastrami and mustard.”

  McCray looked at the coldness in Hardy's eyes. He felt a slight shiver run down his spine. In truth he had underestimated the man with his cheap suits and his five o’clock shadow and yesterday’s breakfast down his shirt. Tom Hardy was a survivor in the least survivable organization on the planet. He sipped some coffee. There was a moment of silence, a little awkwardness with Hardy’s threats still hanging in the air.

  “What about the Bartlett problem?” McCray said, changing the subject.

  “Under control, last I knew.”

  “Go on.”

  “My associate e-mailed me with the location, but as yet he hasn't sec
ured the set of drives. When the time's right, he'll retrieve. By whatever means he has to. Then he’ll eliminate her. Take her out of the equation altogether.”

  McCray looked at him dubiously. “And you can be sure of that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  McCray scoffed at the notion. “And what if he fucks up? What if the police get hold of him?”

  “That doesn't matter.”

  “Doesn't matter? What the fuck do you mean? If he is caught, arrested, he'll lead them back to us.”

  “'Not a chance.”

  “I think you're deranged,” McCray paused, shook his head. “I think you're a fucking oddball and I shouldn't have ever even thought about getting into this.”

  “Calm down,” Hardy scowled at him. “It will be OK.”

  “I can't. I can't just calm down when you're being so damn flippant. What if your associate gets caught? What if he plain decides to take the drives for himself and blackmail us for them?”

  “He won't. Relax.” Hardy shook his head. “It just won't happen.”

  “And you're absolutely sure about that?”

  “As sure as eggs is eggs.”

  McCray drank some coffee and sneered. “Fine. Just as long as you are absolutely sure that your associate is completely incapable of being caught." He put his cup back down and glared. "Who is he, Superman?”

  “No. He's nobody. Nobody who ever existed, anyway.”

  “I'm getting pissed off at this. I want to know who he is and why you're so being so fucking smug. He's human. He can fuck up just like everybody else.”

  Hardy laughed out loud. “You're so fucking naive, McCray. Especially for someone who works in bioresearch for the US government.” He huddled forwards and spoke quietly. “You've got one hell of a lot to learn, that's for sure. Allow me to paint a little picture for you. Let you into a little secret. This man isn't human, not anymore at least. A human can't operate and do the things that this man is ordered to do. Sure, humans can kill and they can do it extremely efficiently. A serial killer loves to kill and is the most organized person within our entire race. Obsessive and organized? Definitely. Capable of operating and working under orders, to achieve a specific objective? No way. Not even a glimmer of a chance. It's been attempted, but all attempts that we are aware of failed. The serial killers were merely eliminated and disposed of. No use to us whatsoever.” He picked up his cup and drank a little coffee, then placed the cup back down and stared at McCray coldly. “To kill is one thing. To continue killing is quite another. Soldiers are highly trained and kill when they have to. They operate under orders and attempt to achieve certain objectives. However, the theatre of war is different and the conditions under which they operate are different. Special Forces outfits produce highly capable, efficient killers, but they burn out quickly. They crack up after such a relatively short time. Like many soldiers who have experienced conflict, they tend to suffer Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome after a while and become utterly useless.